Bob Hattoy, 56, died in his sleep on March 3 at his home in Sacramento, apparently of a heart attack. The gay/AIDS activist became perhaps the most widely known openly gay member of the Clinton administration. He addressed the 1992 Democratic National Convention as a person living with AIDS.

Hattoy was a long-term survivor of HIV and recently had been hospitalized for Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP), a lung infection seen in persons with a severely compromised immune system, but had returned home. Cardiac arrest increasingly is associated with long-term survival of HIV disease.

“When Bob spoke at the 1992 Democratic Convention with courage and conviction as a person with AIDS – and famously a friend of the Clintons – he galvanized the community and gave hope that our voice was going to be heard at the highest levels,” said Sean Strub, founding publisher of POZ magazine. “Bob’s integrity never wavered; he was thoroughly an activist, one who devoted his life to progressive social change.”

In an extended interview in September 1994, Hattoy said, “We don’t need to be activists at ACT UP meetings, we need to be AIDS activists at country clubs, beauty parlors, PTA and home owner association meetings.”

In October 1994, when the Office of National AIDS Policy was moved out of the White House to rented space a few blocks away over a McDonald’s, Hattoy remarked, “Given the budget cuts, maybe the office won’t just be over a McDonald’s, the staff will have to work there too.”

As a member of the first Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, he ripped into a December 1996 strategy document created by the director of the Office of National AIDS Policy – often referred to as the AIDS Czar – that did not address needle exchange, medical marijuana or incarcerated populations. “People with AIDS in America don’t give a damn whether or not it’s our first step or our first document, they care about what is being done or not being done,” he said. “It has got so much missing that I don’t know if I can commend that.”

When it came time for a vote commending the president “for demonstrating leadership” with the strategy document, 26 members of the council voted to do so, one voted no and Hattoy abstained.

San Francisco activist Michael Petrelis recalled Hattoy’s AIDS activism, but also that he “took some risk for speaking out for justice for [Alan] Schindler [the Navy seaman bludgeoned to death in an anti-gay assault in 1993] at a time when the gays in the military issue was consuming Clinton’s agenda, and many Clintonistas were covering either their boss’s butt or their own.”

“Bob did the right thing and stood up, not only for justice for the murdered gay victim but for all gays and lesbians in the U.S. armed services,” Petrelis said.

Howard Dean, chair of the Democratic National Committee, called Hattoy “a true champion for justice. Aside from being a fierce advocate on causes ranging from LGBT rights and HIV issues, to civil liberties and the environment, Bob Hattoy was a wonderfully charming man with a tremendous sense of humor. Most of all, Bob was a friend and mentor to so many.”

Hattoy has requested that there be no memorial service but rather a celebration of his life in the four cities that he considered home – Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York.